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Post by larrywyland3 on Jul 12, 2008 16:34:07 GMT -5
I took my work force outside to do some slabbing. I was slabbing cinnabar; which has mercury, so I wanted to do it outside. I also slabbed up some Chysicolla, some palamino and I don't remember the others. I did more, but the photos didn't come out good. cabs to come some time in the near future.
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Post by catmandewe on Jul 13, 2008 21:06:47 GMT -5
Cool slabs, I really like the swirly storm cloud looking one.
Tony
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Post by sitnwrap on Jul 13, 2008 22:50:07 GMT -5
Nice slabs. Is the cinnabar the long thin slab?
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Post by larrywyland3 on Jul 14, 2008 6:23:37 GMT -5
Yes the long skinny one is the Cinnabar. The red is the mercury in quartz.
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Post by sitnwrap on Jul 14, 2008 23:50:50 GMT -5
The cinnabar is such a pretty stone. All of the cinnabar beads that I have seen are completely red. Do you know if cinnabar is commonly dyed. If so, why would they dye such a pretty stone.
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Post by Noosh9057 on Jul 15, 2008 6:52:31 GMT -5
Very nice slabs.
Roger
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Post by larrywyland3 on Jul 15, 2008 22:00:42 GMT -5
On the beads I am not sure, I have seen red carvings called cinnabar; maybe it is a different material or it could be dyed. I got mine from Jamie (dessertdweller) It is from AZ. I started to do some cabs from these tonight. Hopefully I will be able to post some pics in a couple days.
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Post by Titania on Jul 16, 2008 7:26:32 GMT -5
Great little selection! I really like the cinnabar. I'm really curious as to how it works.
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Post by sitnwrap on Jul 17, 2008 0:25:55 GMT -5
Yeah, I think they must dye it. I like the natural much better. looking forward to seeing the cabs.
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desertdweller
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since August 2006
Posts: 1,803
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Post by desertdweller on Jul 18, 2008 7:33:26 GMT -5
sitnwrap, the cinnabar is red, those are cinnabar crystals that have formed in an opalized quartz vein and the veins run through hillsides of schist. Its from the sunflower mine. The miners would extract the material, crush it and place it in an oven that looks like a giant radiator, the cinnabar vaporizes at a fairly low temp, rises to the tops of the ovens and then beads up into balls of mercury. You have to be very careful when you work with this stuff because of the fact that the mercury vaporizes at such a low temperature. Plasma agate also has cinnabar in it and the fumes are deadly. I cut an agate open to see what it was and found a couple of mercury beads that had gotten stuck in the drusy vugs that were in the middle of the slab, the heat from the sawblade was enough to vaporize the cinnabar and turn it into mercury. Thats a scary way to find out that cinnabar is present in plasma agate, not that holding my breath at that point would of done any good but thats what I did as I tore out of the garage. There is a road here in Phoenix called Dreamydraw, it winds up through a small mountain range that was heavily mined at one time for cinnabar, according to the history I found on the road.....If the mercury ovens were in use and you were driving on that road, the fumes from the ovens would put you in a dream-like state, thats how it got the name dreamydraw. Isn't that a lovely thought? Ack!
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